This Craft of Verse
Published on 16. September 2025
Book
Hardback
128 pages
978-0-674-30245-7 (ISBN)
Description
"A wondrously limpid testament to the pleasures of reading." -Steven Poole, The Guardian
Six incandescent lectures on literature from the patron saint of mirrors, metafiction, and infinite libraries.
For more than thirty years, Jorge Luis Borges's Norton Lectures went unpublished. Recorded at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, the tapes gathered dust in a library vault until their discovery after his death. It was a twist that the author of Labyrinths would have relished. This volume assembles the recovered materials, offering a priceless window into the Argentinian master's lifelong love affair with the English language.
This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and erudition of one of the twentieth century's enduring literary voices. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms-especially the novel-to literary history, translation theory, and philosophical aspects of communication writ large. Borges here draws on a wide range of literary examples-modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. He brings characteristic eloquence and inexhaustible enthusiasm to readings of Plato, the Old Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Whether discussing metaphor, the origins of verse, or his own "poetic creed," Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and the making of a unique artistic sensibility, This Craft of Verse is a sustained encounter with one of the writers whose place in the twentieth century will be forever remembered.
Six incandescent lectures on literature from the patron saint of mirrors, metafiction, and infinite libraries.
For more than thirty years, Jorge Luis Borges's Norton Lectures went unpublished. Recorded at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, the tapes gathered dust in a library vault until their discovery after his death. It was a twist that the author of Labyrinths would have relished. This volume assembles the recovered materials, offering a priceless window into the Argentinian master's lifelong love affair with the English language.
This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and erudition of one of the twentieth century's enduring literary voices. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms-especially the novel-to literary history, translation theory, and philosophical aspects of communication writ large. Borges here draws on a wide range of literary examples-modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. He brings characteristic eloquence and inexhaustible enthusiasm to readings of Plato, the Old Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Whether discussing metaphor, the origins of verse, or his own "poetic creed," Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and the making of a unique artistic sensibility, This Craft of Verse is a sustained encounter with one of the writers whose place in the twentieth century will be forever remembered.
Reviews / Votes
Anything written by Borges glow...with an unearthly light that transforms the world into a plushly furnished drawing room crammed with knicknacks and dusty, leather-bound volumes of arcana...Almost every casual aside from Borges suggests a book of its own; this one is a wondrously limpid testament to the pleasures of reading. -- Steven Poole * The Guardian * If few writers in history have been as prodigiously learned as Borges, certainly none wore their learning so lightly or humbly...[These lectures] display the eloquence and erudite, offhand wit familiar from his writings as well as a charming, plainspoken modesty. * New Yorker * These [lectures] display a literary giant, managing from beneath heavy academic robes to keep the spryness and serendipity of literature alive...Here Borges daydreams aloud, and the result is wonderfully disarming. -- Carlin Romano * Boston Globe * Confidently pulling examples from De Quincey, Keats and Whitman to Plato and the Koran, Borges builds a case that poetry is around us and that beauty lies in the freshness of it...[he] speaks with great vigour on the problems of verse translation and the form and source of poetry...and delves into the sources of his own poetry...[he is] erudite and intriguing but...also witty and puckish. -- Paul Sullivan * Financial Times * In This Craft of Verse, [Borges] discusses some of his favorite texts, conducting a literary journey that began in his father's library in Buenos Aires...Borges's ultimate gift is his unwavering belief in the world of dreams and ideas, the sense that life is 'made of poetry.' -- Micaela Kramer * New York Times Book Review * What if one of the giants of twentieth century literature rose from the dead and told you how he read and thought about poetry? The closest you may come to such a living-room epiphany is This Craft of Verse...Borges offers the opportunity to think, muse, and marvel...The chance to be in the auditorium while the nearly blind librarian of Babel speaks from his heart is a technological wonder that should not be missed. -- Eric Lorberer * Rain Taxi * Few have dedicated themselves to literature with the purity of Jorge Luis Borges...Common sense and radical insight flow in equal measure here: This Craft of Verse will inspire young and old alike to follow the muses. -- Tom D'Evelyn * Providence Sunday Journal * Borges puts you at ease and enchants you from the word go with his ability to get you thinking through a range of topics...This is perhaps ideal reading, in that it consists of short concise chapters that amuse, challenge and make you review the way you look at literature, translation, metaphors, art, writing, and indeed Life and Death. * British Bulletin of Publications * Whether Borges's topic is a metaphor, epic narrative, or the nature of poetry, his basic aim is to reproduce the experience of wonder that poetry inspires. Accordingly, he shies away from poetic theories and instead allows his examples and personal impressions to speak for themselves...the value of these lectures lies in their frequent success at conveying the passions and joys in the experience of artfully arranged words. -- Thomas Hove * Review of Contemporary Fiction * The lectures are immediate, intimate, and timeless, the texts retaining the highly personal flavor of Borges's original addresses...Each lecture is followed by notes identifying and expanding on the rich allusions and illustrations employed in the text. * Translation Review * Borges started to make a living by lecturing after overcoming the shyness that made him stutter, marring his early years. Although he never lost entirely the fear of large audiences, he managed to make a master form out of the public lecture genre. Some of his best essays were first delivered as talks, mostly in the English tradition of confession, wit, and eloquence. This performance of intelligent intimacy with the audience gave his rich commentary and bright summation a conversational tone and the poignancy of a revelation. Borges had an epiphanic view of reading, and to him literature was a memory of the exceptional. These lectures have that elegance and edge, indeed the beauty of the best possible library on the happiest of islands. -- Julio Ortega * Brown University *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
1 photo
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
280 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-30245-7 (9780674302457)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian poet, essayist, and short story writer. The author of Ficciones, Labyrinths, and The Aleph, among other beloved collections, he is one of the best-known figures of twentieth-century Latin American literature. Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, Nothing Ever Dies, and, most recently, To Save and to Destroy. A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Calin-Andrei Mihailescu is a scholar and writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism in several languages. He previously served as Professor of Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, and Hispanic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.